


broken, bandaged, fixed

by onlythemessenger



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Bandaging, Blood and Injury, Caretaking, Fainting, Fluff and Angst, Hurt Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Hurt/Comfort, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Whump, M/M, Medical Procedures, Post-Episode: e039 Infestation (The Magnus Archives), Post-Episode: e040 Human Remains (The Magnus Archives), Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 01, Wound Cleaning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29251893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlythemessenger/pseuds/onlythemessenger
Summary: “I just— I heard a crash after I knocked, so I just tried the door to see if it would open and it— it did, and —you really should lock it at night, you know, it can be dangerous to keep it open behind you like that, even if you're barely conscious when you get home— and I just found you on the floor all grey and passed out with these bloody bandages and you scared theshitout of me, you know that, you—““Martin,” Jon says.“—yeah, okay, what.”He squints up at him. “Why are you here?”“Why am I— Jon, I’m here because ofyou.”-Martin changes Jon's bandages after the Prentiss attack.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 43
Kudos: 251





	broken, bandaged, fixed

**Author's Note:**

> Listened to the season one finale again and had some thoughts :)
> 
> Thank you so much for clicking!

Jon doesn’t remember the ride home.

He doesn’t remember his hands shaking as he tries to open the door to his flat, the key scraping uselessly against the lock until it finally slides home with a brush of metal that’s just loud enough to make him shudder. 

He doesn’t remember stumbling inside, doesn’t remember forgetting to lock the door behind him in favor of just sitting down, doesn’t remember dropping his things on the nearest flat surface, doesn’t remember crashing onto his bed so hard it makes him _ache_ but he’s so damn tired that he doesn’t even care, just sleeps.

***

Waking up the next morning is far more memorable, unfortunately. The pain eating through him, sharp and aching and so incredibly prevalent, makes sure of that. 

There’s a groan in the back of his throat and a bottle of pain meds on his nightstand but no water within arm’s reach and not enough motivation in him to get up and get some. He buries his face in his pillow and doesn’t move from the bed. 

There’s so much he needs to do, so much he needs to research and figure out and decipher and he knows exactly how much is relying on it all, but feeling the way he does now, he’s not sure if it’d be worth it to even try to start. Elias saddled him with a lengthy recovery time before he even left the archives last night. May as well enjoy it now, when he’s still fuzzy enough to not feel guilty about wasting the day— surely there’ll be time for the rest later.

So, he stays in bed. Readjusts.

Kicks off the shoes he’s still wearing considering he didn’t stay conscious long enough to take them off last night.

Immediately runs out of energy before he can do the same to the stiff trousers currently pressing into his bandages.

Barely manages to get himself under the covers properly before he’s well and truly spent.

Sleeps.

***

He wakes up a few times here and there. Never for long, and never terribly lucidly, but enough to confirm to himself that he’s not actively dying from whatever happened to him yesterday, which is a comfort, he supposes.

The nightmares keep him on some semblance of a waking schedule when all he wants to do is sleep for days.

At some point, he gathers enough energy to stand and take care of at least a few small things while he’s up. He heads to the bathroom, chokes down a few painkillers and his antibiotics, brushes his teeth, finally pulls his hair from its bun and rubs at the spot where it was pushing against his scalp until the aching fades. It’s not much, but it does make him feel at least slightly more human. He doesn’t look in the mirror.

He changes into his sleep clothes in the bedroom, where he won’t be tempted to check the damage like he would in the light of the bathroom. He’ll have to change these bandages at some point, he knows, but it seems like far too daunting of a task right now, and his very skin feels so tender and electric-sensitive and _painful_ that the thought of having to clean the wounds out again makes him feel sick to his stomach. 

Later, he decides. He’ll do it later.

He sleeps.

***

Pills, water, piss, pass out.

Rinse and repeat.

***

Someone is knocking on his door and it startles him so badly that it doesn’t even occur to him to be pissed about it.

It yanks him out of a deep sleep that he suspects was already tinted by a nightmare, leaving him disoriented and gasping and heart pounding so hard he can feel it in his fingertips, in his throat, in every last one of the raw holes gouged into his skin. He coughs through a ragged inhale, long overdue for pain meds and feeling it through every inch of him, and it’s all so overwhelming and distracting that he nearly forgets about what woke him in the first place until it comes about again. 

This knock is just a tad bit stronger than the last, though still hesitant, far softer in reality than it seemed originally. “Jon?” a voice calls through the door, slightly wavering but firm, and Jon’s shaky exhale turns into a groan.

For shit’s sake, it’s _Martin._

He swings his legs over the side of the bed, shaking off the last of the panic and he steeling himself for the rush of pain he knows will come once he’s up. He’s not upset, quite, but he’s not exactly pleased either, and he’s fully prepared to send Martin away with a stern talk about privacy and leaving people alone when they want to be alone, considering how Martin’s a strange breed of affectionate who doesn’t seem to quite grasp the concept of honoring the requests of the injured when they don’t match up with his own ideals of comfort and hovering. 

He pushes himself to standing and takes one step before the head rush catches up to him.

It hits him all at once, the overwhelming dizziness washing over him like a wave and the nausea following in quick succession as the pain throbs in time with his pounding heartbeat. He freezes, swaying on his feet, watching his vision go to static and desperately hoping for it to clear before he goes down.

It does not. 

He doesn’t remember hitting the floor.

***

_”Jon!”_

***

He phases back in to the sound of panicked rambling and the feel of someone’s hand pressed to his forehead.

The groan of protest leaves him before he’s even fully aware, a heavy, clumsy hand reaching up to bat away whoever’s daring to touch him, embers of pain lighting up along his arm as he moves. His hand is caught before he can make contact on his own though, a soft warmth wrapping around his palm and gently guiding it back down to his side. 

“—oh, no, no you don’t, Jon, don’t— I’m trying to _help_ you, don’t push me away like that—”

The hand leaves his forehead and reappears at his chest, his right hand still captured. He blinks, trying to get his eyes to focus, the nausea still rushing through his system as his head swims. The wounds under the point of contact at his sternum burn slightly despite the light touch. 

His vision finally clears to see Martin leaning over him, glasses slipping down his nose, kneeling beside Jon’s sprawled form on the floor and close enough that his knees brush Jon’s side.

“... you back with me?” he asks hesitantly.

“Martin,” Jon groans. “What the hell.”

Seemingly placated that Jon’s at least lucid enough to be pissed off, Martin sits back, still keeping a hand settled on Jon’s chest as if he’s afraid he’ll try and up too quickly if he doesn’t offer some form of gentle restraint. “Oh thank god,” he says. “I just— I heard a crash after I knocked, so I just tried the door to see if it would open and it— it did, and —you really should lock it at night, you know, it can be dangerous to keep it open behind you like like that, even if you’re barely conscious when you get home— and I just found you on the floor all grey and passed out with these bloody bandages and you scared the _shit_ out of me, you know that, you—“

“Martin,” Jon says. 

“—yeah, okay, what.”

He squints up at him. “Why are you here?”

“Why am I— Jon, I’m here because of _you.”_

Jon doesn’t like lying flat on his back like this. It’s vulnerable in all the wrong ways, makes him feel weak and shaky and uncomfortable, and now that the vertigo that put him here in the first place is beginning to recede, he tries to push himself up to sitting.

“Not yet,” Martin chastises, and gives a gentle push to Jon’s chest. 

The resulting throb of pain paired with the queasiness that immediately rushes him at even that small movement is enough to make him slide back down to horizontal, a groan catching in his throat. His head thuds softly against his hardwood.

“I’m fine,” he finally thinks to say, however hoarse it comes out. “You didn’t need to—“

“Clearly, I did,” Martin interrupts, incredulous, weary, and fond in equal measure. _”Look_ at yourself, Jon. How long has it been since you ate? Drank anything? Have you— god, Jon, have you even changed your bandages yet? It’s been two days, you could get an infection if you’re not careful—“

“Stop,” Jon murmurs. 

Martin does.

He takes a breath, goes to scrub a palm over his face just to find his hand still held fast within Martin’s. Something makes him leave it there and use his left hand instead, the wounds on his arm and face throbbing in unison as he does.

There’s a lot he could say here. Another _I’m fine,_ perhaps with more feeling this time. An outburst, if he decides he’s feeling theatrical. A simple insistence for Martin to leave. Christ, he doesn’t even know if Martin’s _safe_ anymore— doesn’t even know if he’s putting himself in danger just by letting him be near in the first place, let alone be near while Jon’s so damn weak.

Something still tells him that Martin’s not going to hurt him, but he’s not stupid enough to put blind trust in anyone right now.

But god, he’s so tired.

“You don’t need to do this,” he finds himself saying instead. 

Martin sighs, shadowed in the low light of the bedroom, but Jon can still see how his expression softens. “I want to,” he says. 

Jon takes a slow inhale, lets out a slow exhale. Steels himself to be taken care of in the way that typically makes him want to squirm. Offers up his free hand to Martin as well. 

“Help me up, would you?”

***

Martin says that getting some food in him is the first fix they should make, and considering how Jon’s feeling shaky enough that it takes a good three minutes of leaning against Martin before he feels steady enough to even make it out of the bedroom, he’s inclined to agree.

Martin keeps a careful arm looped around Jon’s waist as they walk. The pressure is light, endlessly conscious of the dozens of wounds hiding just beneath the fabric of Jon’s t-shirt, but firm, ready to catch him in an instant should he fall. 

He’s so warm against Jon’s side.

Jon ends up sitting at his kitchen table with a large glass of water in front of him while Martin bumbles around across the room, getting together a meal. It turns out Martin brought along a whole basket of things he thought Jon might need or might not already have on hand, including but not limited to first aid supplies, bandages, and several cans of soup, one of which he busies himself with heating up now.

The basket sits beside Jon at the kitchen table, perched on a pulled out chair. A box of Jon’s favorite tea is tucked in at the front. 

The sigh that escapes him then is as weary as it is fond. 

Jon wishes that all of this would be unnecessary, but Martin’s already discovered the sad state of his pantry and medicine cabinet. It’s an unavoidable reality that he’s found himself woefully unprepared for taking care of himself in a situation where running on fumes is no longer an option.

Martin knows this, of course, and it’s obvious in every word, every action, every concerned glance he sends over his shoulder as he stands at the stove, making sure Jon’s still upright. Jon tries not to get defensive. 

“You know,” Martin says, stirring the pot on the stovetop, “it wouldn’t kill you to check your phone every once in a while. We all tried to call you— well, uh, it was mostly me, honestly, but I managed to talk Tim and Sasha into giving it a go, and Elias too, even. None of us could get an answer.” He pauses, glancing back at Jon again. “You should know by now, at this point, after everything that’s happened, that one of us not answering their phone is a sure shot to panic for the rest of us.”

In all honesty, Jon hasn’t even thought about his phone over the past few days. Doesn’t even know where it is at the moment. Not much use to having it when you’re practically comatose. But he still feels a spike of guilt over unknowingly leaving the others without confirmation that he was at least alive, knowing the exact kind of panic that comes with unanswered phone calls and ignored text messages. 

“Sorry,” he murmurs.

Martin sighs, turning back to the soup. “Just— just don’t do it again.”

Jon ends up eating the soup while Martin goes and changes his sheets. He hadn’t realized it, but it turns out he’s bled through his bandages at some point in the past two days, and his sheets are spotted with blood and have just been overall dirtied from nearly 48 hours of almost constant use.

He still protests when Martin offers to switch them out. 

“No, Martin, no, that’s too much, you don’t—” 

“Jon,” Martin says, soft as anything, and something in his voice makes Jon trail off. “Just— just let me help you. Please.”

It’s a testament to how exhausted Jon is that he agrees without much more fuss.

The soup is mild but filling and hot in a way that Jon can’t stop himself from reveling in, and Martin put the kettle on before heading back to the bedroom. The flat is quiet save Martin’s rustling down the hall, growing warmer than it has in days now that Martin’s kicked up the thermostat for him despite the summer weather just outside, and Jon, despite the pain, despite the exhaustion, despite the simmering, perennial, damn near primal fear still gnawing a hole in his gut to match the holes in his skin—

Jon just sits with his soup and takes a moment to breathe, and it’s not unpleasant. 

When Martin finishes with the sheets, he pours a cup of tea for Jon and one for himself and settles himself in one of the free chairs, taking the moment to rest himself. Jon’s tea is already prepared exactly the way he would have done himself, and it occurs to him, not for the first time, that Martin pays attention.

“Thank you,” he murmurs into the silence.

Martin looks up from his own cup, startled, and Jon can practically see the _for what?_ forming behind his teeth, but then he just lets out a breath and takes a sip of his tea and says “sure,” instead, soft and gentle and so incredibly Martin. 

Jon takes a sip of his own. Exhales. Settles.

***

“Easy. Easy, go slow, now. Don’t push it.”

Martin’s hands are everywhere even as they stay gentle and so, so hesitant, fluttering around Jon like he doesn’t know where’s safe to touch even as he obviously wants to offer support. 

“I’m fine, Martin,” Jon reminds through clenched teeth, carefully lowering himself to sit on the edge of the bathtub. The pain meds he took with lunch are starting to kick in but not nearly enough, and the transfer of weight is still enough to send a shock of pain racing up his spine. He catches the groan before it can escape him. “You don’t need to hover through this. Or do this at all, for that matter.”

“Oh— oh _really,_ because those bandages are going to change themselves, hmm? Or, or —even better— _you’re_ going to change them, when you can barely lift your hand high enough to take your pills? Is that what you’re planning on?”

Jon glares at him through the dirty hair hanging in his face. 

“That’s what I thought,” Martin says, lofty even as he helps get Jon settled, gentle as ever. “Now, can get your shirt yourself or do you—”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Just wanted to check.” He steps back, hesitant but looking satisfied when Jon doesn’t immediately topple over without someone else there to hold him up. “I’m gonna go grab the first aid stuff. You okay here for a minute?”

Jon doesn’t respond, just starts the slow, laborious process of pulling off his shirt. Martin takes it for the answer it is and ducks out down the hall. 

Every wound is making itself intimately known as Jon moves, pulling and burning and pulsing in a perfect unison that makes him want to scream more out of frustration than pain. It hurts, of course —it hurts like hell— but even more than that, it’s just _constant,_ a never ending throb like some sort of inescapable, demented memory of what Prentiss did to him stored in his very flesh itself, and the thought of kicking it up a few more notches with the cleaning and the fresh bandages just isn’t particularly appealing at the moment. 

He knows Martin’s just trying to help. 

That doesn’t change the fact that every shift of the old bandages sends flames flooding over his skin and he doesn’t imagine the process of applying new bandages is going to ease that sensation in any way.

God, he’s still so tired.

Martin comes back after a moment, arms weighed down with bandages, disinfectant, and a handful of rags he must have dug up from Jon’s linen closet. “This should be everything,” he says, setting it all down on the counter and busying himself with readying the basics, getting together what he needs. “I’m not entirely sure how to go about this but—“

Jon catches the exact moment Martin sees him when he turns around, rag in hand and words instantly dying on his tongue. 

He doesn’t need to look in the mirror to know he looks awful. The past few months haven’t been kind to him, and he’s lost weight he already couldn’t afford to lose. The single, thin layer of bandages standing guard between his skin and the cold outside air doesn’t hide it nearly as well as his jumpers typically do. And the bandages, shit, the bandages themselves are an entirely different story within themselves, bloody and ragged as they are, let alone just how many of them there are, just how much they’re covering. Jon shivers, not quite able to look Martin in the eye.

“Oh,” Martin says quietly. “Oh, Jon.”

“It’s fine,” he says shortly. “Let’s just— I just want to get this over with.”

Martin hesitates, but then nods, moving to crouch in front of Jon on the bathroom tile. “Yeah, I’d imagine you would,” he sighs. He reaches for Jon’s hand. “I think I’ll start here and work my way up, okay? Or would something else be better?”

“I’m sure that’ll be fine.”

Martin’s exceedingly careful as he works. He unwraps the bandages slowly, endlessly cautious of the pull of dried blood as he goes, gentle and focused as he gradually adds to the pile of dirty bandages making their home on the bathroom floor. 

It hurts, of course, but Jon finds himself more concerned with the strange, startling intimacy of the situation than he is with the pain.

Every breath he takes brushes up against Martin’s hands, every slight movement he makes causing Martin to move with him. He doesn’t even know if he’s willingly hugged Martin in the past —he’s fairly sure he hasn’t— and now they’re so close that Jon could rest his forehead on Martin’s shoulder if he wanted to. It’s odd, the close proximity, the contact, and Jon doesn’t quite know how to feel about it.

He moves onto unwrapping his abdomen, and Jon feels his flesh jump at the first brush of Martin’s hands against his ribs. 

But still, it’s— it’s easier, Jon supposes, than he thought it would be.

Martin rambles on as he works, keeping up a steady stream of commentary and apologies and sympathetic hisses of air every time he catches Jon flinching, and for as little as Jon listens to the actual words being said, it’s comforting in a roundabout way. Eases the tension, makes the whole situation feel more casual than clinical. Doesn’t let the silence settle in the way it’s so apt to do. 

Jon’s just beginning to relax when Martin lets the last bandage fall away and reaches for the disinfectant, which abruptly ends whatever peace they may have managed to establish so far.

“This may be, ah, less than fun,” Martin says apologetically, wetting the rag. 

“I’m aware,” Jon says. He eyes the rag wearily, feeling exposed and cold and vulnerable and loathing the way he’s shivering, hands clenched around the edge of his bathtub. “I remember the first time well enough, right after the attack. The paramedics were quite thorough.”

“And, unfortunately, considering how you’ve let the wounds fester in dirty bandages for two days, I’m going to have to be quite thorough myself.” Martin sighs, picking up Jon’s hand again. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Jon says. 

Martin touches the cloth to the first of the wounds and Jon can’t quite bite down the gasp before it escapes him. 

It _burns,_ stinging and aching and sending a new shock of pain racing up his entire arm, and for as entirely expected as the pain is, it still freezes Jon’s breath in his chest. Martin winces in sympathy, careful even as he moves quickly, cleaning out each wound before moving onto the next one without leaving time to linger. Jon lets out a slow exhale and hates how it shudders.

When Martin finally reaches the wounds trailing up the side of his face, Jon can’t help the flinch, eyes shutting against the pain as his jaw clenches. There’s a moment of hesitation, then a hesitant hand carefully settling on the good side of Jon’s face, a gentle thumb sweeping across his cheekbone, holding him steady.

“Easy,” Martin murmurs, working quickly through the last of the holes. “Easy, now, you’re okay.”

Jon’s fairly sure he isn’t, but he appreciates the sentiment all the same, jaw working beneath the warmth of Martin’s palm. 

It falls aways just as quickly as it came and Martin’s finished. 

The rewrapping is practically painless in comparison. Martin’s careful as always, constantly assuring that the bandages aren’t too tight or too loose or placed incorrectly (they never are, and at this point, Jon wouldn’t care even if they were) and this part seems to go slower, not quite as rushed.

Martin moves Jon to the floor about halfway through. Sitting up for this long has sapped his already low reserves of energy, and he finds himself fading once the adrenaline rush from the cleaning begins to ebb away. Sitting on the bathroom tile with Martin kneeling beside him, leaning back against the porcelain of the bathtub, finally allowing himself to zone out for just a moment, he almost relaxes into the process. 

It’s easy to give in when the exhaustion is so strong it’s nearly palpable, he supposes.

Martin’s still talking, just quieter now, a bit more mindlessly, seemingly aware of the fact that Jon’s past the point of actually listening to what he’s saying and just offering background noise rather than anything particularly insightful or important. He’s still being so, so gentle. 

Watching him work, exhausted and pained yet feeling oddly grateful in a way that he doesn’t feel up to dissecting at the moment, Jon lets himself drift.

***

Martin gets him settled with a fresh set of clothes, a frankly alarming amount of water on his bedside table, his painkillers and antibiotics within arm’s reach, and an alarm system on his freshly found phone to make sure he takes them. 

“You sure you don’t need anything else?” he asks, standing at the foot of the bed. “Because if you do, or if you decide that you do later, it’s really no trouble to—”

“I’m fine, Martin,” Jon says. 

Despite how he still doesn’t seem entirely assured of that fact, Martin doesn’t push it, and appears to be at least slightly more appeased now that he knows Jon’s been properly fed and watered and isn’t sitting in his own infection. “Alright,” he says. “If that changes, just call me, okay? In fact, just call me anyway. Or pick up when I call. Just something to make sure I know you’re still— you know, alive.”

Part of Jon wants to push back against the hovering. A bigger part of him understands just how much he freaked Martin out in the past few days, and, on some level, appreciates the concern. “I will.” 

“Good. I’ll check back in on you soon, yeah?”

Martin turns to leave. 

“Wait.”

Sitting there in his bed, feeling wrung out and exhausted and fuzzy from the pain meds that have finally kicked in, Jon’s immediately embarrassed for keeping him any longer, but then Martin’s pausing in the doorway and turning around expectantly and there’s no going back now. 

“Thank you,” he says. 

Martin’s expression softens. “Anytime, Jon.”

He offers a little wave before heading down the hallway, and Jon hears the front door close behind him. 

Jon sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have the time and are willing, I'd love to hear what you thought in the comments!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and have lovely rest of your day! <3


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